In the end the "inevitable" budget wasn't so bad, or at least not quite as bad as Cameron and Osborne had warned us. The City was almost faintly pleased. The lads in the scarlet braces reminded me of a friend who was being wooed by a young man who brought her a bouquet. "Oh, chrysanthemums!" she said. "Such a serviceable flower."

It was a serviceable budget. Even Labour could rouse only frothy, squirty, miracle-whip-style anger.

But it did give them a golden chance to assault the Liberal Democrats. They've been waiting by the school gates for ages to give them a thumping. Shortly before the budget they more or less drowned out Nick Clegg so that the Speaker had to intervene repeatedly to let even half of what he said be heard. Later Harriet Harman piled in. They had warned during the election about the Tories' "VAT bombshell". Now they were going to vote for it!

Then she snapped into full Robert Browning Lost Leader mode. "They sacrificed everything they stood for just to ride in ministerial cars.

"The 22 Lib Dem ministers' jobs have been bought at the cost tens of thousands of other people's jobs."

She had a dig for Vince Cable. "The whole house will have noticed his transformation from national treasure to Treasury poodle!", a reference to the business secretary's line about Gordon Brown changing from Stalin to Mr Bean. But Vince can deliver a line. Harriet can't.

Remember Eric Morecambe's funniest gag, as the police car rushes by with siren wailing? She would have said, "Um, well, I have to inform the house that, frankly, sales of ice-cream will be unable to reach their full potential given the rate of travel manifested by the hon member," and wondered why almost nobody laughed.

But the fact is that Labour have always yearned to hold the Liberals responsible for something. They resemble people who claim that it's the gremlins in the fridge who turn the milk sour and put green stuff on the pâté. Now there they are! The light is on and they can be seen, scampering about in plain view, making the tomatoes wrinkly and addling the eggs, whatever that means.

The fact that many of the measures the chancellor described were precisely those they had fought against less than two months ago was reflected on their glum faces. Even David Laws looked miserable, though perhaps for different reasons.

George Osborne wasn't at all bad, though I still find that if you close your eyes while listening, you think you're hearing Ann Widdecombe. At least we were spared Gordon Brown's normal introduction, in which he would paint a Britain of topless towers, golden sunlight and singing birds under his governance, compared with the poverty and misery in lesser nations such as Germany, Japan and the US. Britain was painted by Alma-Tadema, the rest of the G20 by Gustave Doré.

There were populist moments – no tax rise on cigarettes, fuel or alcohol. "So we can all celebrate if England go through, or drown our sorrows if they don't."

The civil list – the money that runs the monarchy – was going to be frozen. And it would be audited. Could be some sticky moments: "We've been going through the figures, sir, and it looks as if Prince Charles has been taking buses while claiming for taxis."

At the very end, there was a short moment of applause from the Tories, who flapped languid order papers in the air. But the Lib Dems looked pretty grim. Various cheery Labour MPs walked past them and waved as if trying to ginger them into delirious applause. Acquiescence, perhaps – enthusiasm is a long way off.